Moonlit Walk, 1939

From September 2014 to February 2015 we used Pictures of the Month to illustrate Edwin's journey from a painter of conventional landscapes in the 1930s to producing Surrealist works that are quite unlike anything his contemporaries were doing in the 40s and early 50s.

In October 2014 we featured Moonlit Walk, painted in October 1939, just a couple of months after Edwin started painting in a Surrealist style. Most of his work in this period was related to dreams and/or psychoanalysis and one imagines this is a dreamscape. It's unique in the way he combines the local landscape, recognisably the Pentland Hills, with surreal imagery such as the shepherd with the wonky legs, his dog and the ghostly cows. And what on earth is the green worm-like object in the foreground?